How Bout this....

Take a USB Memory stick/thumb drive with you

by crustyg - 2019-12-04 03:20:04

Modern PM interrogation systems can make copies of the data that they have received from your PM.  If you take a suitable thumb drive with you, you can ask for everything that the PM interrogation system has, and have it written to your thumb drive and then you can study, and compare to your heart's content (pun intended).  There's a limit to how detailed the information is - you won't get an electrogram from 3 months ago, but you might well get details from 2 weeks ago.  It also depends on whether your PM is set to record beat-to-beat or averages.  You *will* get all the events that it's been set to record - tachy episodes, mode switches, alarms, etc.

You probably need to watch for daylight saving time - IIRC the PM doesn't change time at all, so you may need to mentally adjust for that.

Sometimes you may have to get this agreed with your EP doc so that the PM tech will actually make the copy and give it to you: a few contributors here have had to push quite hard to get their own data.

SYMPTOM CORRELATION

by Gemita - 2019-12-04 05:24:55

Hello Pacer2019, how are you doing with your new PM??  You are keeping us busy !!

I guess if we keep diary notes of our heart rates and any symptoms we may experience during exercise or when we are symptomatic (like having chest pain, breathlessness, dizzy spells) and present this info to our PM technicians at the time of our interrogation, they may be able to accurately correlate our findings with the PM findings.  I say may because it is becoming increasingly clear to me that the PM can only report what it has been set up to report on and only after certain conditions have been met, for example, when our heart rate has exceeded a certain rate set by the PM, will it log a report.  

Our doctors will determine how our PMs are set up to monitor and treat our own unique condition. So even if you record in your diary that you reached a certain heart rate for a certain duration, this may not have triggered a response from your PM if the parameters set up in your PM have not been met.

I agree, get a copy of your downloads if you are really wanting to learn what is going on.  I think I mentioned this before to you in a post but at the time you were happy to leave this stuff to your doctors.  I have found though (in the UK) that they do not readily hand out PM interrogation data (or even like being questioned during interrogation) and I had to officially request a copy of my records through the normal channels which has taken some months to get electronically.  But it has been well worth the wait and has been a real eye opener. 

Answer

by MrTech - 2019-12-04 07:34:36

Hi, 

Unless your heart rate at that time was high enough to meet the atrial or ventricular high rate monitor, then you won’t be able to see what was happening at that time. 

No

by AgentX86 - 2019-12-04 08:30:36

Unless your heart had an abnormal rhythm THAT THE PACEMAKER WAS PROGRAMMED TO DETECT no specific data is kept. There wouldn't be space or power to keep information on every heartbeat. It will show a histogram of your heart rate - the percentage of time spent at various heart rates.

They use this information to tune your settings. To make optimum use of this information it helps them to know how active you are. For example,  if you're a couch potato and your heart rate is 140bpm for a significant amount of time it means something completely different than if you're an athlete with the same percentages.

However, if something happened that your PM was programmed to capture, information about that episode will be kept and time stamped. It's wise to make notes of strange feelings because they may be able to correlate them to data in the pacemaker to see why you're having trouble.

I was keeping detailed records (on my cellphone) and tried to correlate them to my heart activity but there were no records stored. Then I had a ful blown tonic-clonic (grand mal) seizure. Good reason. My pacemaker didn't show anything because my heart was just fine.i have the records to show a cluster of these episodes, one day a month ,but no one in the neurology biz seems to care. They have their own ideas; patients be damned. :-(

Pacing check

by WazzA - 2019-12-04 12:57:18

I have compared the accuracy of my mobile phone heart rate tracker to Hospital Eqpt & it is pretty accurate. Most Cardiologists & EP's just WILL NOT take any notice of readings from any equipment other than their own so will always go from those, though there is no harm in asking if there are any comparable events.

I know since my own PM implant 9 weeks ago now, I have experienced many palpitations & ectopics etc, but these I believe have been nowhere near enough strong or long enough to be recorded as significant EVENTS by my PM. The EP was however happy to take note that I was still getting breathless & they have now turned on a PM Mode to help with that!

Not taking data from patients

by AgentX86 - 2019-12-04 19:50:02

Ben there done that.  I used to track my BP religiously.  I have an arm unit that records the time, BP, and HR over Bluetooth to my cell phone.  No one was interested in the data so I stopped taking it daily. In another post I mentioned that I kept detailed descriptions of "light headed" episodes (a very distinct feeling, very easy to separate from things like getting up too fast).  Again, they'd pat me on the head and tell me to go on my way, until I had the seizure.  They still don't want to see my notes and don't believe the information I've gathered over two years anyway.

On the other hand, and this might be important to the members of this group, many cardiologists and EPs will take EKGs from a Kardia Mobile.  A few will regularly look at them if they're emailed without being requested. The single-lead KM is under $100 (just saw a cyber Monday ad for $86). It does require a smart phone.

date/time

by Tracey_E - 2019-12-05 10:09:31

Yes, having the date and time you had symptoms can be helpful. They can tell if you were pacing at the time and if you bumped your upper limit. If you weren't pacing at the time it may not be helpful but I pace every beat and more than once have been able to troubleshoot problems by giving them the day/time it happened. 

not enough storage

by dwelch - 2019-12-05 17:17:15

I cant imagine they have enough storage for that yet, I would assume only certain events are logged, so if you pushed into an event then sure.  I dont remember when I would see those reports (each device, each nurse, etc different flavor of reports) was detailed to the hour of the day vs just what day it happened.